The Year In Letting Go, Go, Angels!

Though Fontaine is too hardscrabble a fighter to give up on her country or those who've hijacked the name of her faith—"we just have to work harder, to make our voices louder"—in the election's aftermath, she's none too sanguine.

"Personally, I'm dreading the next four years. All the things that the Bush administration stands for are in direct opposition to who I am. To that extent, I find myself taking a deep breath and saying I have to go forward and to find a way to get through this and not lose myself and what I believe in. It's an interesting moment because I don't want [progressives] moving more to the center so they can grab more from the right, but I don't want people moving farther to the left, either, because there's a way in which the extremes have a similarity—they can both get totalitarian. We have to step carefully at this point. I'm really pleased, though, there's been a lot in the papers asking what's the next step for liberals, and for mainstream Christians, that there's been a lot of thought about it all. Bush may call it waffling, but I call it thinking."